Villains and Villainy

Welcome to the Heroes & Villains: Justice and Punishment project home page. The hero may always get the bad guy but the bad guys always grabs our attention first. Bad guys – both male and female – are almost always the more interesting characters in a tale, whether told via song, film, folktale, novel, theatre, myth, television (live action or animated), or urban legend. Villains can devise and implement or commit their acts of villainy either by their innate sheer genius or employing the dark arts of black magic.

This interdisciplinary project and conference will seek to uncover the historical origins of the ‘villain’, chart the changing meanings of ‘villain’ and ‘villainy’ across times and cultures, explore the characteristics of persons and actions labelled as villainous and assess the various incarnations of the villain in literature, film, media and cultures.